


Front Towards

by inbox



Series: Psychic Load [6]
Category: Cable (Comics), Cable and Deadpool, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Punisher (Comics), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Anger Management, Body Worship, Drinking & Talking, Frottage, Grinding, M/M, Muscles, Non-Penetrative Sex, Sweat, Telepathic Bondage, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-05-13 08:47:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19247797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inbox/pseuds/inbox
Summary: Frank kicks the door half shut behind him and starts the shower, beer still in his hand. He’ll scrub off the stink and sweat, he reasons to himself, and try his goddamn best to not explode from the dissatisfied anger still burning in his gut. He'll be hospitable. He won't do anything stupid. He won't explode, obliterating everything good he has around him.





	Front Towards

**Author's Note:**

> _Anger is frequently a result of frustration, or of feeling blocked or thwarted from something the subject feels is important. Anger can also be a defensive response to underlying fear or feelings of vulnerability or powerlessness._
> 
>  
> 
> Originally posted June 17th 19, updated August 7th 2019 to bring some details into line with an upcoming story.

It's been an easy kind of a night. Easy few days, truthfully. He's been entertaining a guest in Baby Gitmo for a day and a half; some putz that started singing sweet after only a couple of hours with his eyes blindfolded and his ears plugged with cheap candle wax. Admittedly the blindfold had been cheap wax too, and the guy pissed himself in terror when Frank had poured it on, but still.

Dickhead started talking and Frank filled in more than a few blank names in his special family tree. Even managed to finish a Clive Cussler paperback to boot. Easy job done on a budget.

It was annoying. Tedious.

Disappointing.

The thing that finally did the guy in was the table being tilted 15 degrees below horizontal, head down. By the end his head had been purple-red and fat as a melon. One blood vessel somewhere important went pop under the pressure and that’s it, goodnight Irene. Guy stroked out nice and clean. Frank didn't lay a hand on him ‘cept for cleanup, and even then all he'd done was roll a strawberry-flavoured dollar store condom on the geek’s post-death erection and dump him in one of the abandoned subway trunking lines.

The tunnels were always the simplest solution for a body dump, ‘specially round here. The cops would call it creepy sex gone wrong and not even bother to open the books, he could guaran-fucking-tee that. Within a few days he’s gonna see a lighthearted article in the paper about it, weird hookups underground, one of those ‘just another crazy day in the Big Apple’ pieces that people in the flyovers eat up with a spoon.

Doesn’t ease the itch in his fists though, an easy job. Doesn’t sate the wild feral dog in his brain, snapping and howling. The kind of crazy day in the Big Apple he’s thirsty for is the kind that makes the front page and decimates a made man's family tree, not the lighter news segment on page 12.

He pulls on a sanitation department hi-vis vest and wears his safety helmet backwards, and cuts through a snaking switchback of steam tunnels and trunking lines, whistling in cheerful greeting whenever he encounters another underground worker (in their hi-vis vests, and safety helmets worn backwards) until he emerges near his van, thinking about nothing more than drinking a cold beer and eating Thai leftovers and passing out on his couch.

The dog in his head tests at its chains.

* * *

 

 **Message sent:** 0423  
im coming over.

 **Message sent:** 0426  
i don't need the address.

 **Message read:** 0456

* * *

 

It doesn't take an eagle eye to spot Cable loitering near his Jersey warehouse, wisely keeping to the far side of the wide street in case Frank’s got any proximity surprises buried in the cracked concrete or behind the high pressed tin fences. The hooded jacket he's got on doesn't do a lick to hide who he is, not to Frank. Not when he's that big and that broad. Not when his eye gleams brighter when Frank winds down his van window to call out that even good looking vagrants will be shot.

“Be careful. Some vagrants shoot back,” he says, voice carrying in the still morning air. Cable follows the van in after once the IFF RFID in the dashboard give the all clear, his hands shoved in his pockets. The guy is familiar with the kind of by-rote routine everyone has when coming back to base - the zen patterns of storing and sorting and discarding, everything an experienced soldier does to make the next rollout faster, smoother, deadlier - and doesn't bother to help. He'd only get in the way. Instead he takes the stairs two at a time to Frank’s personal quarters, up to the converted office perched high in the warehouse rafters.

Frank takes his time to reset his supplies, methodical and organised. Everything in its place and a place for everything, honed to perfection by decades of practice. By the time he's finished cleaning his weapons and packed the van for his next trip, he's jonesing for a beer and a shower in that order.

Truthfully he forgot that Cable is even there, and reflexively pulls a knife from his boot when he walks blind into his quarters and finds Cable asleep at the trestle table that does triple duty as Frank's kitchen bench, junk drawer and occasionally as an actual table.

Lucky. The idiot is so goddamn _lucky_ to not have a beat to shit ka-bar installed under his ear. He scowls and opts for a politer way to wake up his guest. He claps sharply, palms cupped for the most explosive sound possible.

Cable doesn't flinch. “I'm awake,” he says, eyes still closed.

“You're a pain in the ass.”

“Also true.”

He leans against the office door and unzips his boots, peels off his socks and rolls ‘em up for attention later. His back cracks when he stands up straight again and he shakes his head in irritation. Everything hurts these days. Knees hurt, ankles hurt, his right shoulder makes a sound like crackling cellophane for hours after he wakes up. His hips are still a mess after shattering the left arch nearly eight years ago, now screaming at him after sitting on an office chair for a day and a half.

He doesn't even want to think about his hands. Made it for nearly fifty years without getting arthritis, then all it took was some wiseass shithead with a forehead tattoo to go at his hands with a hammer. Now he's gotta carry hand warmers in his loadout bag, just in case.

Christ, he's getting old.

“We’re all getting old, Frank,” says Cable sagely. His eyes are still closed.

He mutters under his breath all the way across his office-cum-entertainment area and roots around in the fridge. Frank shoves some cold cuts in his mouth and breaks the first ring on a six pack of shitty domestic beer, and, long dormant instincts of hospitality stirring, he picks out a bottle of something faux-European for his guest.

He offers it to Cable and, when he doesn't accept it straight away, waves it in pointed irritation. “Been up all night n’ I've earned a drink,” he says by way of explanation. “You look like wet shit too, so take it.”

“Been a long week,” Cable admits, and takes the bottle without further complaint. “You should meet my colleague Logan,” he adds, popping the cap free by wedging it into the crook of his metal arm and flexing. “You both have a similar outlook on breakfast beer.”

Frank pauses with his beer halfway to his lips. “Little guy? Carries his own cutlery?”

Cable snorts. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“Yeah,” says Frank, deliberately too casual to be missed. “I know him.”

He rebuffs Cable’s immediate gentle press against his brain, pointedly barricading his memories by loudly thinking about how he needs to go to the grocery store later, and exactly what brands of cereal he wants to buy. He doesn't think about Wolverine, who he _does_ know in exactly the sweaty intimate way Cable is clearly diving for. He certainly doesn’t think about the guy strapped to a repurposed hospital gurney, entire head purple with trapped blood swelling over the ugly mask of cheap paraffin wax Frank has dripped into his eyes.

“We’ll come back to this later,” says Cable, letting the joke drop.

“Or not. Let a man have some secrets.” He chugs his beer, leaning against the spartan warehouse kitchenette and eyeing the big man overflowing the cheap shitty folding chair he uses for eating and relaxing and bleeding. “This a social call or--?”

Cable opens his mouth then clearly thinks better of whatever he was about to say. ‘Yeah,” he says lamely. “It's been a hell of a week. Touched down an hour ago and all I could think about was…” He trails off and shrugs. “If I'm in the way.”

“I'd tell you.” He sips his beer and runs an analytical eye over Cable, checking for scrapes and bruises and damage. Looks fine. Looks exhausted. “I'm gonna soap up ‘cause I stink like hell. Make yourself useful and heat up the takeout in the fridge. I've got the Knicks game waiting for me. Up to you if you want to stick around.”

Frank strips to the waist outside the windowless box that passes for his bathroom and deliberately stares down his guest, chin up as he drops his clothes at the door. Cable’s eyes are searing hot on his skin, watching him with blatant hungry interest. _Dangerous,_ Frank thinks, not caring if Cable is listening to him or not. _Dangerous thing, getting addicted to that expression on someone's face._

He kicks the door half shut behind him and starts the shower, beer still in his hand. He’ll scrub out the stink and sweat, he reasons to himself, and try his goddamn best to not explode from the dissatisfied anger still burning in his gut. He'll be hospitable. He won't do anything stupid. He won't explode, obliterating everything good he has around him.

* * *

Cable is a featherweight drinker. Three beers and he’s red in the cheeks, long legs splayed wide as he slouches on Frank's beat ugly purple couch. The morning sunlight shines through his silver hair, mussed from where he's been leaning on one hand, watching Castle as much as he’s been watching last nights game.

He’d tried Frank’s brain again, the intrusion a fizzy bubbling feel at the top of his spine right in the middle of the first quarter. Part of him wanted to welcome him in and show the tightly clenched ball of rage that’s sitting like a dead weight in his head, fed dense and heavy by the sobbing confessions of a wannabe capodecina. Another part of him wants Cable to fuck off out of his head and mind his goddamn business.

A secret little pathetic part of himself, worm-white and thin-skinned, is worried that whatever Cable might find in his head is gonna make him to put Frank down like a sick animal.

In the end Cable said _hmmm_ and retreated, and didn’t try anything at all.

The sun is almost over the horizon when the recorded game finishes and the tv changes to breakfast television. Frank is finishing the last of a six pack and picking a stringy strand of green onion from his teeth, half listening to a chipper presenter telling him one weird trick to look up to five years younger. A light touch presses on his shoulder, strokes down on his chest, ruffles through the short hairs on the back of his neck, all at once without warning.

He twitches reflexively for a weapon that isn't there, body corded as tense as wound wire.

One moment, then two, and he lets it all go with a measured breath through his nose. He looks at Cable, taking up too much of the couch and wearing that loosey-goosey smile of the pleasantly drunk.

“Frank,” he says. “C’mere.”

He's a little sloshed himself, having pounded enough cans to feel it in his limbs as he sprawls over Cable's bulk. They kiss, messy and wet, and Frank drifts on the pleasant feel of that big warm metal hand weaving up under his shirt, fingertips kneading into the meat of his back.

Christ, he's oblivious. He could rip Cable’s face apart with his bare hands, jam his thumbs into his eye sockets and destroy his eyes. He could shatter his throat with a jab of his elbow, leave him blue in the face and choking out. Stupid, so stupid. Cable is feeling up a monster.

Cable hums under his breath and kisses Frank real sweet, little darting swipes of his tongue against his lower lip. It's nice. They're both too tired to fuck, too tired to do little more that lazily grind against each other as they make out on the couch like a pair of horny teenagers.

He can't do this right now. He can’t have _nice_ now.

“Come to bed,” he hears himself saying. He doesn't recognise his own voice, gravelly and throaty. He's got no idea why he's saying any of this. The only thing he should be saying is _run_ and _get out_ and _leave_ _\--_

“Shut up, Frank,” says Cable, patient as a drunk man can be. “I'm gonna go lay on your bed and you're gonna… oath, right there, keep going… gonna come sit on my—” Frank keeps sucking at the spot he's working on Cable’s neck, digging in his teeth to make the blood bruise spread bigger and darker. He could grit his jaw and bust the skin, rip with his teeth and tear down ‘til he bursts Cable's jugular.

“Frank.” Cable pushes Frank back with the heel of his hand square in the middle of his forehead, pushing him back enough that he can squint cross-eyed at Frank's face. “You trying to scare me off?”

“Piss off.” He wonders if he looks as miserable as he sounds, all defensive and pathetic.

“Piss _on_ ,” counters Cable, and laughs at his own wit.

“Fucking hell, Summers,” mutters Frank, but his attempt at extracting himself from the couch is easily thwarted by Cable who, even while pleasantly tipsy, has the strength and grip to hold him in what isn’t, but quickly could be, one hell of a hold.

“Fine,” he says, debating the relative values of hurting himself but getting loose. He gives in. The numbers were never going to go in his favour in this situation.

He thinks, and not for the first time, that Cable has the weight and strength and reach and everything to take down Frank with his bare hands. Frank might be the better brawler, courtesy of Uncle Sam’s money and years of hard practice, but Cable is a mountain even without accounting for his metal parts. All he'd have to do is take a beating until Frank is tired and flagging, then drive that big metal elbow into the right spot and that’ll be it. He’ll be on the ground and there's going to be no getting up again.

Maybe he shouldn't find that a comforting idea, get his bell rung like that. He's never been afraid of death. He's only afraid of having a meaningless death, out of his mind and off his leash.

Knowing that if that happened there would be someone out there could easily put him down like a rabid dog is a strange comfort.

Cable mumbles something incoherent into the hair over his ear. “Is it?”

Frank sits up, ready to shake off Cable’s grip with explosive force. Instead he just sits up too fast, braced for resistance that wasn’t there. Cable lets him go, lifting his leg so Frank can swing his feet back onto the floor and sit on the edge of the cushion, rubbing at his temples with thick scarred-up fingers.

“Don’t try to analyse me,” he says tersely, scowling at the floor. He needs to sweep up. The warehouse makes a good base of logistic operations but it’s searingly hot in summer and dick-shrinkingly cold in winter, and always so goddamn dusty. It’s no home. These days he doesn’t think he even knows how to have a home.

Cable burps. “Is that what you want? Someone to kill you?”

“No.”

“Someone to reign you in.”

“No. Mind your business.”

He nudges at Frank’s hip with his foot. “Show me.”

“I said mind your fucking business.”

And, yet, it’s so stupidly easy to give up when Cable nudges at his brain. Fuck it. Let him look around all he wants ‘cause it’s not like Frank isn’t going to stop thinking about the past few days for a while longer.

Let him see how cheated he feels at having the fight taken away from him. He’d been looking forward to it, practicing the art of a real interrogation. Violence, that's nothing. Any idiot can be violent. Cable does violence well, Frank knows he does violence better. He’s got the memories to prove it.

Violence is weak though, all spark and no heat. Even when faced against the prospect of violence, there’s nothing quite like the true twin terrors of anticipation and time. The best tool in Frank's interrogational arsenal is someone’s own imagination, undermining their own confidence each traitorous thought by traitorous thought.

He’d read a book, for chrissakes. He should be thrilled, some little putz spilling his guts after nothing but being unmoored from his sense of time and space.

(He’d learned the trick of blinding and deafening someone, taking away their senses, from reading an eight month old young women’s magazine in the waiting room at Waterside. He waited for the night nurse herself to dig a shard of glass from his ass, one quick move away from severing his sciatic nerve, and learned ten tips for a better sex life. _Use a blindfold and earphones to dull his senses and make every touch a surprise!_ Sure. Never let it be said that anyone Frank merits worth taking back to Baby Guantanamo would find his touch anything other than really, really surprising.)

Cable bumps around his head, bubbly drunk around the edges. Whatever he's doing is giving Frank the kind of out of focus vision he associates with a hard knock to the skull. He scowls at the tv and debates breaking the ring on another six pack.

“Hmmm,” says Cable. His foot pokes at the small of Frank’s back. “Hmmm.”

The scowl on Frank's face twists deeper. All these things he wanted to do to the little snivelling shit, _all of them,_ bubble up in his brain. All the things he’s done to other people, and how easy it had all been. All the times he’d taken people apart, piece by piece, all for good reason. Cable flicks through his head like it’s a glorified filing cabinet, sometimes slowing to look at a particular moment or a vivid memory, other times skipping entire years with little more than a glance. A man strung against a chain link fence with his belly split open and his intestines garlanded up on the wire catches his attention and he holds the memory up for close inspection.

Frank still remembers that shithead well. He’d deserved every moment he’d suffered through his long protracted death. Never a fast way to go, a gut wound, but it would never ever make even with even a fraction of the pain he’d caused to other people. He tells Cable exactly what the turd did, how he’d done it. How many times he’d done it, who he’d done it to over and over again, until Frank showed up and did what the law couldn’t or wouldn’t.

Cable just looks at him on the other end of the couch, spotlit by the watery morning sun with his brain peeled open and left free for the taking, and says _hmmmm._

Frank is across the sofa before he even consciously realises what he’s doing, instinct and rage boiling up through his muscles and bleeding into his bones, molten hot and burning him from the inside out. The sofa squeaks across the laminate floor from the force of his movement, noisily protesting the combined weight of two grown built men slamming into the cushions.

Cable grunts as he takes a few licks, shitty punches from a bad angle that make a lotta noise without the heat to match, but even from deep in his cups he’s capable of knocking Frank off him. Cable’s knee landing square into Frank’s guts takes the wind outta him, and one good kick sends him flying off the couch.

The air around him seizes up and locks him in place. Can’t move a muscle below his shoulders, his ass frozen in place with an inch of air gap under his sweats. Huh. Never floated before. At least Cable keeps giving him firsts: first murder for cash, first telepathic fuck, first anti-gravity experience.

“I warned you.” Frank scowls at the big man on his couch, tenderly rubbing at a cherry on his cheekbone that’s gonna take a couple of days to go down. “Fucking _told you._ You don’t get to psychoanalyse me. You got no fuckin’ right.”

Weird. Can’t move a muscle but he can feel the commands racing through his nerves, readying his body for a fight. Tense up, get ready. His palms prickle with the pulsing adrenaline roaring through him, ready to roar up from the floor and start swinging.

The rabid dog in his head is howling, feral, throwing itself against its collar and chain.

Cable’s mental hold on him loosens a little, just enough to set him on his ass.

“Still want to show up on my doorstep, Cable? Still wanna come in and—”

“Shut up, Frank,” says Cable pleasantly. He’s smiling, the chucklefuck, looking at Frank with a lopsided expression of fondness. “You barely say six words half the time and now you can’t shut up.”

He glowers up from his undignified spot on the floor, Cable’s telekinetic hold still curled intimately around his body.

“First thing I did after I met you was call some favours and pull your files,” he continues, laying back down and stretching out to the fullest. His knees hang off the far arm, toes wiggling in his socks. “D’you know you hit your big four kay confirmed two years ago? By my reckoning you’re nearly at five.”

He didn’t, actually. Huh. Nearly five. He had a vague guess he’d passed the milestone just by time spent and munitions expended, but it’s always nice to be officially tallied and appreciated.

“You make me look like a rank amateur,” continues Cable, full of admiration. He laces his fingers across his belly, then folds his arms over his chest and then, finally, decides to wedge one arm behind his head. “This is a piece of shit couch. You know that right?”

“I took it off the side of the road.”

“I’ll buy you a better one. Beer?”

Frank closes his eyes for a moment, breathing as deeply as he can through his nose. Everyone out there throws wild right handed haymakers; one of these days he’s gotta square up with the one person in New York with a good left hook and get his nose broken the other way for once.

“I know, Castle,” Cable continues. “You don’t think I know how you operate? Why d'you think I trust you?”

Frank grits his teeth. “How much do you know?”

“Only what I need to know. Don’t worry.” He sadly shakes his empty can and carefully sets it under the lip of the couch. “I needed to confirm your orientation. Your, uh, compass.”

The unspoken part of that statement hangs in the air between them. Cable doesn’t need paperwork and dossiers. He could suck every scrap of information from Frank’s head if he wanted, and leave nothing behind but an empty space. He could take every safe house, every cache of weapons and money. He could look all the way back to that day in the park, look back to the war. He could look back to ten year-old Frankie in poetry class ready to kill a man without hesitation.

He could. He doesn't. After all, who needs torture tools when the human mind - Frank's barely human mind, retreated deep into the killing place that he might not ever find his way back out again - is so readily available to torture itself?

The fridge door creaks when it opens. Frank had passed out on his feet one morning, too shot up to be moving but too hungry to stay down, and the hinge took all his weight and never been the same again. The fresh six pack comes sailing past his ear with a crisp whistle of cut air.

“Shut the damn fridge.”

Cable snorts as he snaps the first can free and tosses it to Frank. It stops a foot away from his face, suspended in midair. “I know you don’t pay an electric bill.”

“I got sliced ham in there, dipshit. You wanna go buy me another pound for lunch this week, fine.”

God, this is all so stupid. He wants to laugh at the goddamn absurdity of it all, trussed up by mutant magic on a shitty floor covered with all the scuffs and marks and cigarette burns of a lifetime ago. Sitting here on his ass, squinting past a beer can gently circling in midair right in his line of sight and arguing about cold cuts.

‘Cept he can’t laugh, not even if he wanted to, not with this acidic rage coring out his guts and burning down his spine.

He’s so tired of being angry. Angry doesn’t get shit done. Angry just makes him careless and stupid. Angry is what’s gonna get him killed. He works better cold. Coldness is efficiency and ruthlessness. Coldness sticks to the plan and remembers his intel. Coldness kills, and kills well.

“I can help you. You know that, right?”

“No you can’t.” He closes his eyes, tries to modulate his breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth, just like he’d learned too damn long ago. Get his heart rate down, get his breathing slow. Can't nail a target if you're huffing a gale.

Cable makes that infuriating _hmmm_ noise again. “Not like that. I’m on thin ice as it is, Castle. Every month I expect to get told to hand back my X.” The couch springs groan in protest as he tries to get comfortable. “Bad enough I bring a human in to do wetwork with me, no offence. Getting involved in your shitstorm gets me kicked out the door for good.”

He’s got no idea what that means, give back an x, but he knows the shape of that sentiment. No one ever likes to acknowledge the people who get their hands down into the hot and wet, the ones who do the messy work that allows everyone else to stay clean and dry. He’s got the big four kay on his official scorecard to back up his end of that particular deal.

“—but in here,” Cable continues, tapping the lip of his beer to his temple. “I’m no Frost but I reckon I can reset you a little.” He pauses, then makes a _so-so_ gesture, loose at the wrist. His beer spills, running down his wrist and elbow, dripping onto the linoleum. “Last time went okay.”

 _Last time,_ Frank thinks as loudly as possible, _you made me screw my bedsheets and called it a painkiller._

The bright flare of Cable’s eye confirms what the overplayed attempt at shuttering his expression loudly hints at. He’d liked it. Liked the look of Frank laid out on his bed, restlessly grinding against the mattress. Liked the way Frank had panted through his body telling him he was in pain while his stupid broken animal brain insisted it was pleasure, clutching at Cable’s knee and moaning like he was starring in his first time on video.

Look, he gets it. Cable had been horrified at the time. He thought he’d been doing Frank a solid while he performed kitchen surgery, no ill intentions even considered. But, always, time can make things change. Memories change, and feelings about memories change.

“I won’t do that again,” Cable says with the over-enunciated solemnity of the truly drunk.

Big shithead probably got himself off to it later. God knows he has. Frank had woken up with more than once with his dick raw and his wrist hurting from screwing himself stupid thinking about Cable fucking around with his brain. In his fantasy it feels like the ultimate amyl rush; a hot warm wave rushing through his body that never ends until he’s fucked loose and wet and moaning for it. Getting taken barely lubed and molasses slow and virgin tight is the way it plays out in Frank's imagination when he's got a hand on his dick in the shower, shooting his load on the tiles because he can't stop thinking about Cable controlling his ability to take pain. 

Frank hates pain. There's no pride in taking on pain. It’s just something to be absorbed and fought through, and ended as soon as possible. That though, the idea of converting hurt into pure pleasure? That's a pain he can't get enough of.

“Oath, Frank,” says Cable sitting up and staring at him as intensely as a tipsy man can. Nosy. He can't help himself, always listening in to Frank's head. His tac pants do nothing to hide the way his dick is chubbed up against his thigh, and has been since Frank took a swing at him.

Frank stares at the bulge of Cable's cock, his mouth dry as the desert, and thinks about getting his mouth fucked while he’s trussed up in the immovable bonds of his telepathic grip.

God, he just needs something to take his mind off being so fucking angry lately. He needs that cold back again. He needs to bury his rage until he can tame it, harvest it, use it as a tool to push himself a little harder and faster when his tank is empty and there’s nothing wait for him but the big dark.

 _Captain Castle,_ says Cable in his head with officious gravitas, and then his brain is full of ice cold snow and white noise and a sweet, restful nothingness.

* * *

“--s’really not really my speciality. C’mon, sit back with me. Good man, Frank. Give it a minute.”

Hell if he knows how long it took him to come back online.

Somehow he's made it from the floor to the couch in one piece. Not hard to miss that it's his flop couch, ugly as sin and rusting out long before he'd picked it off a sidewalk green somewhere six months ago. Whole thing sounds like Satan's orchestra whenever he passes on it. Jacking off is all the way out; first and last time he ground one out on the ugly purple cushions it was so goddamn loud that he forgot who he was thinking about and came sad over his own shirt while staring at the coffee maker.

No idea how it's holding both their weights. The springs are making a racket every time either of 'em twitches.

“‘Specially not after a couple of beers so give it--”

“Four,” mumbles Frank. He sways away from the thick solid heat at his side. Cable wraps an arm around his shoulder, big and solid, and tugs him close until he gives up fighting against the inevitable and sags like his strings have been cut.

How long has it been since someone has wrapped an arm around him and not because he was injured?

“Four beers,” corrects Cable. He leans back on the couch and Frank slumps onto his shoulder. He's so tired. The smell of old cologne on Cable's collar is getting into his head, making him think ‘bout the last time he'd luxuriated in the tiny human decadence of sleeping side by side in someone’s bed. The sheets smelled like Cable, the pillows smelled like Cable. When he'd woken up in the late morning the bed smelled like them both, and that'd bought up a whole mess of thoughts in his head that he refused to examine in any way, shape or form.

His head now, though. It feels… well, shit. His head feels like nothing.

He’s all there, far as Frank can tell about himself. Physically, mentally. Fingers and toes all respond as normal. He can feel where the seam of his sweats is cutting into his nuts. His head though, hell. He cautiously feels around for that dense ball of rage that's been eating through his brain and finds nothing.

“This gonna come back?” No point in specifying what ‘this’ is. They both know.

Cable nods. “Told you,” he says to the ceiling. “Moods. Emotion. Delicate things aren't my specialty.” His thumb is stroking over the swell of Frank's bicep, back and forth. “If I do your memory, it's taking your entire memory. All of it, start to finish. Pretty good at doing soft resets though. And headaches. I'm really good at getting rid of headaches.” He drops his chin enough to look at Frank, his strange golden eye shining intently. “You got a headache? I can fix it.”

He supposes that if he was anyone else this is the part where he'd make a shitty joke like ‘only headache I got is you’ but he's not in the mood. Truthfully all he wants to do is go lay down on the bed in the dark and switch off. He'd take anywhere comfortable where he can enjoy this reprieve from the grinding relentless exhaustion of carrying around so much useless, dangerous rage. Sure, he's been given a reprieve, but all it's really done is highlight how big a leftover void that rage has left behind.

It's his turn to say _hmmm_ , eyes half shut. “You want to go to bed?”

Cable chuckles. Frank feels it through the metal of his chest against his cheek, a rough grind like a beater car trying to start on a cold day. “Depends. You got a real bed or a slab?”

_Smartass. I got a pillow top._

_You want me to carry you to bed?_

The mental image of Cable carrying him over the threshold pops unbidden into his mind. Cable chuckles again and the image adjusts incrementally, little bit by tiny detail, until Frank in their shared picture is naked and wearing a dainty veil on his head.

“Jesus,” complains Frank, but he's smiling lopsided into the thick of Cable's chest. “You got a fetish or something?”

“Not ‘til I met you,” he says, and squeezes his arm. “ _Mrs Summers_.”

“You gotta shut the fuck up,” he says, grunting as he shakes himself free and gets to his feet. “Don't drag me into your horny bullshit. Didn't you say that before?”

Cable waves away his help and gets off the couch on the second try, big thick arms windmilling to hold his balance. “Too late,” he says, and gooses him for good measure. Cable's hand lingers, squeezing the dense muscle of his ass and stroking at the stretch of fabric over his hole and down to his balls. “That's only for official bullshit. I’m very invested in your personal, uh, bullshit.”

Frank mutters under his breath but quickly acquiesces to getting kissed on the hair, his ear, his cheek, his mouth. Cable kisses him so damn good, crushing him close so he's got nowhere to look but up. Always makes him feel small when they're this close, wrapped up secure and pressed against the width and breadth of all that metal and muscle.

Cable looks at him, mismatched eyes wide, and clears his throat with great dignity. “I may not be able to perform.”

Frank manages to hide his bark of surprised laughter, but god, it's a near thing. He gently shakes himself free to rescue his unopened beer from where it rolled under the couch. He does it partly so he won't forget where it is and accidentally start World War 3 when the can goes off like a bomb next time it's freezing cold or bakingly hot, and mostly to hide the hysterical expression on his face.

“Not a problem,” he says once he's got the beer in hand and his face carefully schooled into neutrality. “You think my dick is gonna work after a week like this? I'm too tired to do anything more’n rub off. Even that's if you're lucky.”

Cable looks cartoonishly relieved and kisses Frank on the ear before loudly proclaiming that he wants to go to bed right now. He plants a wet one right on the upper curved of his ear, exactly where it's gonna be annoying as hell until he can wipe it dry. He's gone before Frank can respond any more than shoving light at his shoulder, making his way to the bedroom in a rush to get naked and get horizontal, and maybe not in that order.

Another time, another place, this would be a dream come true: all this homely shit, all this ‘come to bed’ and getting swallowed up by the bulk of Cable’s immense strength. Feeling safe, for all that Frank can remember about what it is to be safe.

Cable is ruthless and efficient and a killer on the field, sure, but he makes Frank feel good. He pulls his brain apart like overripe fruit and Frank comes crawling back for more every time, addicted to the feeling of being _known,_ intimately and completely. There's no hiding. No pretending. It's such a relief to just exist for an hour here, a weekend there, each brief respite doing as much to keep him going forward as everything, _everything_ else.

If he was a different man, he would…

“--have _got_ to get one of these.” A thump, Frank guesses, of Cable trying to take off his pants and knocking into the cheap plaster wall Frank installed to give himself a little privacy.

“Is this a king? How did you get it up here? Next time you - _stab his eyes_ \- need something, uh, floated, you let me know.”

Frank takes a moment to clean up, letting Cable’s running commentary on his bed pass him by. Takeout back in the fridge, stray beer back in the fridge, empties in the trash. It gives him time to get his balance back.

He splashes water on his face from the kitchenette sink and hangs his head for a moment, exhausted. How do you tell a hookup-cum-occasional employer that he's the first person to come into Frank’s private space since Lieberman fifteen years ago?

Frank rolls his neck, gritting his teeth at the pop in his spine it earns him. He's not equipped with this kind of knowledge, shit like matters of personal relationships. He purged all that decades ago, discarding it as useless in his endless grinding war. He just knows that this is _something_ , maybe something good, and he doesn't want to fuck it up. He doesn't want a repeat of Lieberman. Christ, look how _that_ turned out.

He's gonna fuck it up. Of course he's gonna fuck it up. He's not allowed to have people he people he cares about. That gets people killed, punished for the sin of having Frank lo-- _care_ about them.

But Cable isn't like the others, is he? He's not an innocent who has never been hardened by war, civilian-soft and vulnerable. Frank might be a one man battalions, but Castle is a walking fortress, tough as teak and forged steel. Cable can fight back and, if necessary, he'd fight Frank and he might even win.

He makes his mind up. Shit or get off the pot. Take it. Make it. He smacks his palm against the lip of the sink with a dull think as if to punctuate his decision with a fanfare, right as invisible fingers trace down Frank’s spine and trace along the elastic of his sweats, dipping low to cup his balls and tug at his dick.

 _I'm coming,_ he says in his head, reefing off his shirt and throwing it on the couch for later wear. _Slow down you idiot, I'm coming._

 _I hope so,_ says Cable dreamily. The image he plants in Frank's brain is exactly that, in unmissable full detail. Frank winces at the goddamn stupid expression he makes when he comes, and forces it out of his mind as he drops his sweats at the bedroom door and and sees Cable laid out across his bed like a three course meal.

There's so goddamn _much_ of him, lit by the thin morning sun that comes through the old warehouse windows. Cable is huge, filling up his selfish decadence of a bed with a body solid as a tank with long powerful legs and thick muscled arms. He looks at home, like he should always be there inviting Frank to join him with a pat on his thigh.

“Love this bed,” he says happily. “Bet your back feels amazing sleeping in this bed.”

“Even better seeing you in this bed,” says Frank before he can think better of it. “Jesus, Summers, you look good.” He walks up the mattress on his knees, aches and pains easily ignored for once, and lets himself get bodily dragged over Cable's belly to get kissed.

“Didn't take your shirt off,” he says between breaths, pushing the soft fabric up so he can get his hand on the thick meat of Cable's pecs, groping shamelessly. “Got your dick out but didn't get further than that?”

“Don't wanna leave you with anything left to unwrap.”

Frank can't help himself. He laughs, really laughs, head down between Cable's shoulder and the pillow and wheezing ‘til his shoulders shake. It's so goddamn stupid, not even a funny joke, but the stress of the past few days and his temporary reprieve from that destroying anger and a six pack for breakfast all crash together into one joyous moment of laughing at the picture of Cable tipsily sprawling out on Frank's bed, so eager to get naked that he's neglected to actually undress.

“You big idiot,” he says fondly, and deepens the mark he left under Cable's ear with a firm press of his teeth and a sharp suck. “You drunk slut.”

“Oh yeah,” says Cable happily, dragging Frank’s free hand down under the hem of his shirt. He scratches through the coarse hair on his belly and feels the dense muscles bunch and jump under his touch, softened by a thin layer of fat.

Frank takes his time with Cable, luxuriating in the realisation that, for once, he’s got nothing but time. It's not a quick suck after a job, and not a brief hook-up before reality reasserts itself. He's got all morning to indulge in getting his fill of all that metal and muscle, like topping up the tank after running on fumes for so long.

He got spoiled by that weekend in Rochester. He got spoiled by the luxury of doing nothing except sleep and fuck, and he's starving for just one more a brief taste of that useless, selfish break from his grinding, tiring state of perpetual war.

He sits back and gets a good look at Cable in the clear morning light, really looking at him, thighs to face. He feels the shape of Cable's delts, pinches his nipple through his shirt, closes his eyes and feels out every muscular dip and swell of his abdomen. He presses his thumb into the birthmark over Cable's ribs, runs his fingers down the crisp v of muscle running down to his hips.

“You know what some guy told me these are called?”

Cable looks up at him from under his lashes, as coy as a middle aged man could possibly be. “Cum gutters?”

“Yeah,” says Frank, the corner of his mouth curling into a rare smile. “Cum gutters.”

When Cable artlessly wrestles off his undershirt he grabs it before it can be tossed away, pressing it to his face and breathing in the scent of sweat and deodorant and old cologne. Cable stares at him, lips parted as he watches Frank breathe him in. He gently pets at his cock hanging fat and soft over his balls, and makes a surprised noise at the sight of Frank pressing his nose to the underarm crease of his tee and closing his eyes in pleasure at the thick scent of sweat.

“By the Bright Lady,” he says in tipsy wonder.

Maybe Frank should feel a frisson of embarrassment. Maybe it's familiarity, or it could be his beer breakfast, or even just that Cable just took a psychic swizzle stick to his brain, but he can’t even pretend to make himself give a fuck about what he looks like with his face buried in body-warmed cotton. Cable’s shirt smells amazing, earthy and sour, and he thinks dizzily that he could get drunk off that alone.

“Fuck, you smell good,” he says, dropping the shirt at their side. He leans in to mouth up the thick meat of Cable’s pectoral, up to the little swell of fat ‘round the join between shoulder and chest. When Cable obligingly raises his arm over his head to wrap his fingers ‘round the utilitarian steel bed frame, Frank buries his face in the tuft of dark grey hair in his pit, breathing in so hard that his chest aches from the unaccustomed strain.

“Jesus,” he says, right into his skin. He can taste salt on his lips, salt and the metallic tang of faded antiperspirant. “Jesus christ, Summers.”

He shivers when Cable’s heavy metal hand tentatively rests on his neck, and moans sweetly when those thick fingers stroke at his hair, ruffling the short hairs on his nape.

 _Blinds_ , he says, mouth busy working a dark mark under Cable's right tricep. Soft pit hair catches at the stubble on his cheek. Cable's skin is thin and soft and fragile under his teeth. _Day shift’ll be in the dockyard now. Don't want them getting an eyeful._

He's lived in this warehouse on and off for the past twenty-odd years in relative peace. Long enough that he'd finally bought a stupidly expensive mattress, rationalising it to himself by everything from the low chance of his place getting a bust this year to his back hurting from sleeping on army surplus for the past few decades.

Keeping the longshoremen in the next yard over from getting a front row seat to him riding dick seems like good basic neighborly behaviour. The less attention his private activities draw, the lesser the chance of his one personal decadence getting wiped out.

It's the price of business, one that he's come to accept without ever feeling particularly pleased about it. Safe houses come and go, get busted and wiped. Armouries come and go, found and cleaned out. A luxury mattress though? That's forever.

“Let me,” Cable says grandly, and waves a hand in the air. The blackout blind unrolls with a bang, bathing the room into near total darkness.

In the dark he strokes his hands all over Cable, thigh to neck. The skin of his thigh is fascinating in the dark, flesh bulging as it gives way to the metal that's blood-hot under Frank's touch.

Cable groans like he's been shot as Frank drags his fingertips over the rippled seam, and seizes him by the wrist to keep him in place. “Feels good,” he says by way of explanation, pushing his hand back down to his inner thigh. “Most people won't touch it.”

He frowns in the dark and presses down firm. Most people. They put a sour taste in his throat, those words. _Most people._

Cable squirms, thick bands of metal flexing under Frank’s hands. “Can sorta feel it in the metal,” he says, answering the question that’s lurking in the back of Frank’s mind. “But the skin is— _uhh,_ too many nerves. Not enough skin.”

He gets it, really. He’s felt it before. Cable always pets and knuckles at his thigh when Frank is blowing him or fucking him. More than once Cable has shared that nervy blue spark of over-sensitivity with him, let it echo it into his head.

He shuffles down the bed and licks at the puckered line of flesh. He works his way from Cable's knee up the seam of his thigh, and tentatively brushes his cheek against the heavy weight of Cable’s balls. They’re firm and drawn tight, and he can’t hold back the excited noise he makes at the discovery that Cable's liking this too, getting off on being explored in the dark. The plain coverlet shifts with a soft sound of cotton against cotton as Cable tips up his hips, heels pressed to his thighs, making it easier for Frank to blindly lick and suck at his balls until his jaw hurts.

 _Frank,_ chants Cable mindlessly in his head. _Frank, Frank, sweetheart, Frank, please._

He rubs his nose through the hair on Cable's flesh thigh, up over his hip and across to the untrimmed hair around his junk. Cable smells stronger here, perspiration and body wash and old traces of Gold Bond, and he closes his eyes as his brain shorts out. Jesus, he smells so good.

Cable grabs at his head, scratching at his scalp with blunt metal fingertips.

“Lemme blow you,” Frank says, bold in the dark. _Make me suck you off. C'mon Summers, make me._

Cable doesn't need clarification. Those big unforgiving fingers seize cruelly tight in his hair and drag him to his dick, pushing him down so his nose collides with his shaft, soft and fat and resting on the crease of his hip. “Suck,” he orders.

S’weird, he thinks, matching up his memory of Cable’s gorgeous hard dick to the semi he’s sucking blind. He's long had Cable’s cock and balls memorised; able to recite by rote all the things that make him swear softly, the spots that make him buck up and fuck into Frank’s throat. They're all committed to memory and as familiar as the city streets.

This though, sucking him soft, it’s like learning to read Cable all over again. Every ridge, every vein, every treasured landmark is suddenly gone, and he’s learning on the fly what makes Cable push up into his mouth, or tug at his hair, or cuss under his breath. All those tells and reactions that get his own cock dripping wet where Cable is concerned, all those learned associations that leave him dick-drunk and stupid in the brain, on his knees and desperate to please: he's gotta earn them all over again.

 _Good man, Frank,_ says Cable in his head, a big hand lightly pressing on his scalp and lazily pulling him up and down his cock. _Perfect. You’re so good to me. Your mouth, oath, I_ never _wanna leave your mouth._

He can take him easily like this, just plump enough to sit on his tongue and fill his mouth. He can swallow him to the root and press his nose flush to the solid muscle of Cable’s gut without gagging on the intrusion in his throat. Better, he can swallow around the soft furl of his foreskin and let the tight motion of muscle and spit make Cable thump his fist against the mattress and call Frank a perfect cocksucker.

He can feel his face warm up on the dark, even as he closes his eyes and focuses on the shape and weight of the dick in his mouth and the restless roll of Cable's hips.

Frank holds him firm in his fist and kisses the crown, dipping his tongue under the loose seam of Cable's foreskin and chasing every earthy drop of precum he can find. He points his tongue and laps into his piss slit to drink it straight from the source, every drop that wells up swallowed as quick as possible. The noise from Cable grows louder, a thundering simulcast in his head and ears; a hungry cacophony that scours out his brain and leaves him grinding a damp spot into the sheets.

“C’mon,” says Cable, tugging at Frank's thick arms until he reluctantly lets his cock go with an audible wet pop and lets himself get hauled up the bed, settling between Cable’s thighs. “Get up here.”

They sloppily push against each other, panting in the dark as they find their rhythm. Cable moans hoarse in Frank's ear as they grind against each other, lost in the warm heat of skin against skin and the wet leak of Frank’s dick.

He taps on Cable's legs, a silent encouragement to wrap those big powerful thighs ‘round Frank's waist, pinning him and holding him close so he couldn't escape even if he wanted to.

If he even wanted to, if that was even possible.

Frank knows he can't think about that too closely. Too dangerous to start getting lost in the fantasy how he doesn't want anything else right now. The rabid howling dog in his brain is quiet for once, leaving him empty and mindless and interested in nothing but the huge man under him.

He's gotta snap out of it. Can't go down that way. Getting too lost in the what-ifs is a one way ticket to madness.

They rock against each other, kissing and biting, panting loud. Frank sets his teeth to Cable's earlobe and feels the metal threads under the skin, resisting the press of his teeth.

He wriggles away and Frank follows him, sucking at the soft flesh, pushing at the invisible threads with his tongue.

 _Frank._ Cable digs his nails into Frank's shoulders, eight points points of pressure breaking through blood vessels and crushing his skin. _Don't._

 _Distract me,_ he says, challenging. He wants Cable in his head. He doesn't know how to ask for it. He needs it, craves it, hates it and loves it. Cable can take his brain apart and inspect every secret shame that he carries like a cross. He can fill his head with so much noise that he doesn't know where he starts and Cable ends.

He wants that. God, he wants that so bad. He's always so tightly in control, day in and day out, wound so tight that he might snap. _Please, c’mon, give me, give me…_

Cable’s eye flares blindingly bright in the dark room and then he’s there in Frank’s head, loose ‘round the edges, broadcasting so loud that it makes Frank’s ears ache from the inside. He can feel the way his flank feels against the tender skin on Cable’s thigh, the scrape and scratch of coarse hair on his belly, the press of himself weighing down _on_ himself, looping and cycling until his head is a mess of feedback and noise.

“Wanna fuck you,” mumbles Frank into Cable's mouth. “Summers, god, I wanna be in you. You know I can make you feel good.”

He blindly thumbs at the ugly zipper of skin and metal on Cable’s neck and shivers at the mirror feeling of over-sensitive nerves sparking and crackling in his own skin. Maybe he's egotistical, thirsty to experience things that no mortal man should experience, but Cable’s loud broadcast of the way Frank feels and tastes has shown him what he feels like to come down his own throat, to shoot all over on his own face… to feel what it's like to get penetrated by himself is the ultimate shameful desire. He wants it, desperately.

 _You just want to fuck yourself,_ counters Cable, cutting to the heart of the matter. _You’re a slut, Castle._

“Like you don’t benefit,” he retorts, digging his knees into the mattress to give it to Cable harder and faster, just to hear him groan in encouragement. “You fucking love it. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”

He feels, rather than hears, Cable laughing at him. “Frank,” he says. _Frank, Frank, Frank. You have no idea, do you?_

Whatever he’s about to say in reply gets wiped away by Cable pulling him down and kissing him fiercely, licking into his mouth until they’re both huffing loud and ugly.

“C’mon Summers,” he says. There was a moment there, something huge and looming in the dark room, but maybe now isn’t the time to turn a light on it. Maybe it's never gonna be the right time and he's gonna keep nursing this painful little feeling until he's dead or done. “You gonna come for me or what?”

The bedhead creaks as Cable reaches back to get a good grip on the frame, arching his hips and digging his heels into Frank’s ass and forcing him up higher, just right for him to grind on Frank’s gut. The sheer size and strength of him, the control, even for a featherweight drinker four beers deep on an empty stomach… it’s enough to make Frank wheeze out a breathy _ah-ah-ah_ of stupid brainless delight at Cable using him to get himself off, lost in the weeds and only thinking with his semi-hard dick.

He thinks again about that pressing intimate hold of Cable's telekinesis, how it seized him in place. Cable could've fucked his mouth then and there. Could've flipped him ‘round and fucked him dry, turned his brain against him and morphed savage pain into the kind of syrupy pure pleasure that he can only dream about when his bones ache and his head rings and the wild dog in his head is howling for blood.

Cable could use him whenever he wants. Cable _can_ use him whenever he wants.

Cable says his name, shocked, and comes. His brain goes off like a firework, huge thighs clamped hard against Frank's flanks as he arches his back and groans. The bloom of semen between them feels searing hot, sticking skin to skin, and Frank’s mind is wiped clean of anything except that hot wet glide under his belly and the luminous golden glow of Cable’s orgasm flowing through him.

“Fuck, Frank,” says Cable. He reaches up in the dark and holds his face between his hands, kissing him in between deep exhausted breaths.  “I've got mine. Come on, you too.” His voice sounds hoarse, like after he’s been sucking Frank off too deep and too fast.

He shoves his hips against Cable in a sloppy mimicry of fucking, biting down his neck and nosing at the crease of his arm. He breathes in his scent, the smell of new sweat so much brighter than before, and rubs himself off in the slick wet mess of Cable's cum. He's close, so goddamn close, ready to shoot his wad if only he could get a little more than the push/pull of wet friction down his shaft.

Cable digs his heels into his back and forces his rhythm, steady and inflexible. He rubs his hands down Frank’s shoulders, his arms, and combs his fingers through the sweat beading along Frank’s temples. He tilts his chin so Frank can mindlessly rub his face into the thick column of his neck, too distracted to do anything other than pant wetly into the warm corded metal under his mouth.

_C’mon Frank. You're not gonna make me wait and disappoint me. Give it up, Captain Castle. That's an order, soldier._

The commands help. The ghostly touches stroking his feet and his thighs, snapping mean at his balls and pressing against his asshole help even more.

Frank makes an ugly noise and locks his back and comes.

Time passes. The yard next door sounds a klaxon for 7:30AM.

Finally, _finally,_ Frank lets his full weight drop onto the broad chest underneath him with an exhausted chuckle. He can’t even twitch at the feel of Cable gently sliding out of his head, the last bouncing refractions across their shared connection dropping out to a sudden oppressive silence.

“Jesus.” He wipes his nose on his forearm and shakes his head, wiped out and suddenly so bone tired he thinks he could sleep for three days straight. “And you claimed your dick wouldn't work. You should drop by uninvited more often if this is your idea of not performing.”

Their combined mess of semen slowly runs down Cable’s side and drips on the sheets.

“Easy solution,” says Cable, his voice a soothing deep rumble under Frank’s ear. “Invite me next time.”

“So take an open invitation. Any time,” says Frank before he can shut his idiot mouth. Stupid, _stupid._

He’s conscious all the fucking time that, down at the bare bones of it, this is a working relationship. Casual hookups, the goddamn _incredible_ fucks Cable gives him, are just a benefit on the side. Cable hires him for his proficiency with weapons and planning, not his dick or his sparkling personality.

If he fucks this up then he’s out of a job, he rationalises to himself, wilfully ignoring that he takes Cable’s work as chump change projects to, in a manner of speaking, get out of the house.

And really, the sex is phenomenal. Jesus, it’s so good. He hates how good it is, having someone literally in his head reading every twitch, every flinch, finding every barely-formed idea and shameful secret fantasy and dragging it out into the sunlight and making it into reality. It’s unbelievable. He hasn't been lacking in good fucks for the past few years, not by a long shot, but compared to the pure addictive quality of having someone in his head, someone like Cable… it just can't compare.

Losing Cable's occasional paid work would suck. Losing that phenomenal combination of great dick and telepathy, however, would leave him an addict without a fix.

Underneath him Cable makes a supremely satisfied noise, unhooking his big broad thighs from Frank’s middle. His hip pops when he gingerly drops his heels to the mattress.

If Cable is waiting for some caveats on Frank’s blurted invitation he doesn’t show it. He strokes his palms down Frank’s back from shoulder to hip, pushing firmly into the muscles again and again until the tension melts from Frank’s bones. He lays there without moving, sluggish and heavy and ready to punch his card for the day.

“You got anywhere to be?”

He’s distracted by the soothing strokes of Cable’s hands, metal and flesh, and the question takes an embarrassingly long time to percolate through his head. “Nowhere pressing. Not ‘til tonight. You?”

The noise Cable makes is noncommittal, neither good nor bad. “M’comfortable right here.”

“Stay if you want.” He’s trying for casual and trying for cool, and attempting to hide the fact that the thought is making his heart rate pick up faster and faster, all because of the silly unattainable domestic fantasy of sleeping together.

He got a taste of that at Cable’s apartment, all those months ago. To say that it had been on his mind since then was an understatement. Like a life preserver to a drowning man, like a glass of water in the desert. The quiet comfort of sleep and someone else’s warmth has been very much on his mind, almost as much as he resents himself for thinking about it.

“I’d like that,” says Cable softly, then audibly grimaces as Frank peels himself free, wet skin to wet skin. “Might clean up first though.”

“Cum gutters doing--”

Cable laughs, relieved at the break in tension. “Yeah. Doing their job.”

They mop up with Cable’s shirt, just enough to get them through the day without gluing themselves to the sheets, and begin the slightly awkward routine of finding their spaces in a new bed.

Neither of them are inclined to sleep tangled together, limb over limb. Too many interrupted nights for both of them, both too used to sleeping light. The first night in Rochester they kept waking each other up, hyper aware of the presence of another body snoring and coughing and farting in their space. The second night Frank sacked out like the dead, and only woke up long after the sun had risen ‘cause Cable sucking his morning glory slow and lazy was too damn good to sleep through.

Frank stays to the right and Cable takes the left, and Cable fills the silence with quiet talk about the news until they’re both on the edge of sleep.

Frank’s nearly out of it when Cable trails off into silence, and cautiously pats across the mattress to lace their fingers together, metal and flesh. Cable says something in a language Frank’s never heard before. The shape of the words sound lonely to Frank’s ear, and he squeezes Cable’s fingers in response.

 _Go to sleep,_ says Cable in his head, his words coloured with just a hint of embarrassment. A warm glaze of golden static bathes Frank’s mind, soothing and heavy, and he’s asleep before he can think to ask what Cable said.

Frank wakes up as the sun is setting, stretching under the sheets with a grunt. His thighs and core pleasantly ache with the last traces of exertion, and he makes a face as he rubs at the patch of hair on his stomach left knotted and tight from dried semen.

His head feels good. Not great, but not bad. Just good.

The seething ball of anger that's been poisoning him for so long is still there, but whatever Cable did has sucked the heat out of it. It feels manageable, like he's finally gonna be able to parcel it out and pack it away to be used as a tool to keep him alive.

The sheets bleed cold on the other side of the bed, long since abandoned. He listens to the familiar sounds of the warehouse filter through his hearing, settling sheet metal and wheezing air conditioning. There’s nothing out of place, nothing that gives away another body moving around his space.

He rolls back onto his back and rubs the crust from his eyes, blinking into the dark. He’ll send Cable a message later, he decides. _Thanks for the reset, you owe me a beer._

Maybe even the IFF code for the front gate. Maybe. If he still feels good tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> [@stryfeposting](https://stryfeposting.tumblr.com).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [To Be Well](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20073133) by [SenkoWakimarin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin)




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